Wordpress wouldn’t let me just say the above, so I guess I’ll actually say something. This integration of “Catholic” and “Protestant” principles of priesthood/pastoring has been what has been banging around in my head for the past month or two. I don’t suppose I could just print this out, give it to the CoM, and say “what he said.”

I have responded to your questions here:

http://willgwitt.org/philosophy/i-get-mail-about-earthquakes/

Bill

Thanks for sharing this. Going through such academic angst myself, it’s nice to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

1) In considering creation as essentially contingent, you say these things about creation’s contingent nature:

“In any universe that is both contingent and intelligible, destruction of being is both possible and inevitable.”

Do you think this same sort of destruction of being is both possible and inevitable in the new heavens and new earth, which will be just as contingent as the first heavens and earth? If you don’t think this will be the case, why?

2) If God could have created a world without these possibilities in the first place (which must be true if there is going to be a new heavens and new earth where there is no more pain and there are no more tears), why did he not go ahead with that in the first place? You can’t reply that such a question is ‘nonsensical,’ because you’ve already admitted that God actually could, and will, make such a world in the future.

In this case your ‘no best possible world,’ response doesn’t make much sense, because it seems that Christianity is interested in two worlds, one in which sin and death exist, and one in which they don’t. It doesn’t matter that the latter world isn’t the best possible world, or that God could continue to improve this world eternally (which presumably He will in the eschaton) – what makes the question sensible is the fact that we can delineate between two such possible, contingent worlds. The question remains why God chose to create the first kind.

Thanks again for your post